Minnesota in January

A few things on my mind...

1. On Hastings, Minnesota

We roamed downtown Hastings in negative degree weather in search of Geek Haven Cafe, part cafe, part gaming and comic book store. This was a detour from one of our roadtrips up north—whether running out on frozen Lake Bemidji (see the pic in my first post here) or perusing the Christian antique store somewhere off Great River Rd or stopping at the thrift store in the Paul Bunyan Mall (where I attempted to try on clothes in the general mall bathroom with tiny beige stalls that were heavily in use at the time).

Nostalgia tugged at me as I recognized some of the plastic-wrapped Yu-Gi-Oh cards on display that my baby brother coveted when we were kids. Or the PS One, which came out in 2000, shortly after we received the original PlayStation for Christmas one year. When I was ten years old, I remember visiting my mother’s hometown in the Philippines in 1998 and being introduced to a game that rewired my brain the moment I stepped foot on that puffed, pink and blue chec…